1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a remote boot system for multiple client terminals and method thereof, and particularly to a remote boot system and method that employs the booted client terminal as a local server to boot other client terminals, so as to improve the efficiency of remote booting and reduce the load on remote servers and networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a network environment, client terminals, such as Information PCs, Set Top Boxes (STB), Information Appliances (IA), and Window Based Terminals (WBT) can be booted by downloading the corresponding operating system from a remote server through the network, and executing the boot steps to run the operating system. This is known as remote booting.
FIG. 1 shows the network architecture between client terminals and a remote server. As shown in FIG. 1, WBT (11), Information PC (12), STB (13) and IA (14) are connected to a local area network (10). These terminals may send a request to download operating systems from the remote server (30) outside the local area network (10) through the network (20).
FIG. 2 shows the download of an operating system from a remote server. First, the client terminal (15) sends a boot request packet (21) to the server (30) if the client terminal (15) needs to boot. When the server (30) receives the boot request packet (21), it sends an operating system (22) corresponding to the boot request packet (21) to the client terminal (15). Thereafter, the client terminal (15) executes the boot steps to run the operating system (22).
However, the bandwidth of the network (20) may be compromised if a large number of client terminals in the local area network request booting. Furthermore, the server (30) may crash if the client terminals request to boot at the same time, thereby delaying the boot process.